The 2024 IPA International Photography Awards Are Out! How Do Photographers Abroad Shoot Photo Series?

In today's photography tutorial, Thomas has picked some of his favorite photo series from the Professional category winners of the 2024 IPA International Photography Awards, to see together how photographers abroad are shooting.

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the fully illustrated companion to the video above. Thomas turned the 11-minute review of series from the IPA 2024 professional categories into text and paired it with keyframe screenshots — from typological "portraits" of Los Angeles street corners, to approachable series such as Korean crowds and animal silhouettes, to the discovery of order in black-and-white minimalism and dreamlike American suburbs, and finally the Magnum-style composition and colour of environmental portraits from Afghanistan. Skim it here for the framework, then go back to the video to study each series.

Start with a finished frame. Captured at 9:13 in the video, this image belongs to Tariq Zaidi's Afghanistan's Resilience Amidst Conflict, second place in this year's Photo Essay category — a dense flock of pigeons, level branches, an imposing building and children in the foreground, the series that impressed Thomas most in the whole episode. He opens with a caveat: he does not really recommend IPA to non-professionals, since entry fees are steep and a win brings almost no cash prize or media exposure — only personal validation and a line on the CV. The winning work itself, however, is of a very high standard and well worth studying for how photographers around the world express themselves (at 0:39 in the video).

01 Los Angeles Corners: Typological "Portraits" of a City

The first series that struck Thomas this year is Shawn Michienzi's street work on Los Angeles. It is a bustling city where countless photographers shoot, so how do you find something new and deep? Michienzi was drawn to street corners and, in a typological manner, made a series of portrait-like images of them, showing the character of different neighbourhoods, their differences and the many facets of city life (at 1:39 in the video). The first corner is a turn sign and a traffic light; at the second, walls of two different materials meet — a fascinating seam.

The third is rich in warm tones, yet weeds still push stubbornly through cracks in the concrete at the corner, joined by the shadow of a person and a tree — a dense little frame (at 2:11 in the video). Next comes what looks like a derelict factory, leaving room for stories and imagination; in the fifth a street sign seems to have snapped and been propped against the wall. Every corner shares a similar form, but its meaning and expression keep shifting — a surveillance camera here, graffiti as LA street culture there — so that each image differs from the last.

This one shows a thoroughly modern, reflective metal facade, and in that reflection you also see the buildings opposite, plus the blue sky, white clouds and vegetation that come with LA's hot climate (at 3:14 in the video). A single corner thus reflects the city's culture, climate, geography and architecture — layers of meaning. The final frame is a luxury boutique, sleek and modern, set in contrast with what came before: different classes, different neighbourhoods, and plenty left for the viewer to read (at 3:47 in the video).

02 Korean Crowds and Animal Silhouettes: A Series Is Not That Hard

The second is classic landscape-as-document: Seunggu Kim shoots on large format while recording teeming crowds. His subject is South Korea's rapid development — holidays are short, so people can only cluster in leisure areas around the cities, literally piling up on public holidays; combined with East Asia's communal atmosphere, it produces a startlingly exaggerated world (at 4:07 in the video).

Many people ask Thomas whether the series he keeps highlighting are too hard for enthusiasts — how do you even begin to plan one? It really is not that hard. The simplest series can be a single place or a picture story; David Swindler, for instance, simply grouped the animal silhouettes he had shot at sunrise and sunset into one category, and there is the series (at 4:47 in the video). A set like this works for competitions and just as well as a nine-frame grid on social media.

03 Black-and-White Minimalism and Suburban Dreams: Finding Order in Ordinary Corners

Fabio Menino photographs the trees of a region in Italy, conveying its distinctive environment through the contrast of buildings and trees; black and white, fog, a telephoto lens and wide-aperture blur give the set a strongly unified look (at 5:20 in the video). Marc Koegel photographs largely abandoned churches and grain elevators on the prairie, again in black and white with minimalist compositions — beyond the subject, the snow and sky are kept clean, producing a coherent visual language (at 5:46 in the video).

Mark Forbes photographs scenes that feel like dreams — small-town and suburban America, with the look of old photographs or film stills (at 6:25 in the video). He excels at finding shifts of light and shadow in everyday life, structures that are both ordered and complex, and colour, and builds them into a singular atmosphere. An utterly ordinary laundromat becomes a study of circles and, to the right, rectangles, and with the play of light and colour it is mesmerising (at 6:44 in the video). Many frames read like paintings or design compositions: triangles, triangular shadows, light, rectangular forms.

A ladder, a street corner — he finds a distinctive sense of order and cultural signifiers in the most commonplace places, and often works in low light, letting light and shadow create a very particular flavour (at 7:19 in the video). Thomas says it more than once: this photographer is seriously good.

Gleici Rufatto shoots at high noon instead, using colourful buildings and the sky for minimal compositions — Thomas saw a lot of similar work in Australia — that are highly ordered and design-like, then adds a shadow, a plant or a cloud as the finishing touch; the results look like Mondrian paintings, yet with variation (at 8:07 in the video).

04 Environmental Portraits from Afghanistan: Magnum-Style Composition and Colour

The final series leans documentary: Tariq Zaidi's Afghanistan's Resilience Amidst Conflict took second place in this year's Photo Essay category. It is a set of portraits — unmistakably environmental portraits — that place Afghan people firmly within the world they inhabit (at 8:50 in the video). Thomas is convinced the photographer's landscape composition must be exceptional: the first frame has a dense flock of pigeons, level branches, an imposing building and a group of children in front, people and place equally powerful (at 9:14 in the video); the second is a tidy, ordered street corner from which a man emerges leading a camel — instant drama.

This one is an old barbershop full of human warmth: the dense decoration and the person are placed at the centre, while a bewildering interplay of mirrors and portraits — Thomas admits he can no longer tell which is which — creates a complex, captivating sense of space (at 9:35 in the video).

The composition here works the same way: a low angle, the car behind looming dramatically, and an old man cradling a rooster under each arm — every frame carries stories, metaphors and room for the imagination, with tremendous visual impact (at 10:00 in the video). There is also a Soviet-era tank now covered in local religious inscriptions, along with cultural gatherings, a cemetery and a vegetable market — scenes of everyday life (at 10:19 in the video). The photographer's composition, his choices about what to include and leave out, and his colour are all captivating, with the classic Magnum humanist feel and the look of a National Geographic spread — a thoroughly deserved award (at 10:43 in the video).

1. A series starts with a repeatable form: Los Angeles corners shot as typological city "portraits" — similar in form, different in meaning — let a single corner speak of culture, climate and class; 2. Series are not hard — one place, one picture story, one category of sunrise-and-sunset animal silhouettes each makes a set, good for competitions and a nine-frame grid alike; 3. A unified look comes from choices: black and white with fog and soft focus, minimal compositions against clean snow and sky, circles, triangles, light and colour found in laundromats and street corners, midday colour blocks like Mondrian; 4. Environmental portraits need landscape-grade composition: pigeons and level branches, a camel emerging from a corner, mirrors and portraits stacking space, a low angle that sends a car looming over an old man with two roosters — story, metaphor and colour together make a Magnum-worthy set.

Selected Works Appreciation